VandeHei is Face-Palming Himself Somewhere

What’s a native of Oshkosh, WI (Jim VandeHei) who went from the Washington Post to co-found Politico to do after this story breaks by the site’s Donovan Slack?

MILWAUKEE — It’s very clear what side President Obama is on here in Wisconsin.

Behind the stage where he will speak today are two flags: an American one, as usual, and right alongside it — and just as large — a flag for the local union, Wisconsin 1848.

The president has been mum in recent months on the battle raging in the Badger State between unions and Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who is facing a recall election largely pushed by labor after he pushed through laws effectively taking away collective bargaining rights in the state.

Here at Master Lock, Obama is speaking about domestic manufacturing and highlighting what he calls “in-sourcing,” bringing jobs back from overseas. The padlock manufacturer brought roughly 100 jobs back from China to this factory –union jobs, the White House has noted.

Walker had been expected to join the president but canceled this morning because his office said he has the flu.

(Yes, I’m fully aware the link above sends you to the Politico main page.)

The “union” flag in question pointed out by a picture at Politico…is this:

Yes. That is the state of Wisconsin’s flag.

Not the flag of “Wisconsin Local 1848.”

No word how painful it was to de-bunch-ify Mr. Slack’s panties from his @$$ crack.

UPDATE – The story is now gone from Politico’s site.

Here’s the picture they had.

UPDATE II Thanks to Jerry Bader, who was able to get a screen capture of the site before Politico took it down.

And, less than 18 minutes later, the story had not only been scrubbed from Politico’s site (with a redirect to the main page) but, amazingly, any reference to the story had also been pulled from Google’s cache.

Funny how these things work, isn’t it? Shocking how quickly the “real” media is able to make their mistakes vanish from the face of the earth. Poof.

Glad you’ve had your fun taking jabs at the media. Fact is, they fixed it. Fact 2: we all make mistakes – adults admit it and move on. Why not focus on the positives aspects of the event and speech? Like: Master Lock is doing a nice job, way to go! Or, the economy is slowly recovering thanks in large part to steps taken by this administration.